Munich

founded by

Luís Berneda

belongs to

Javier & Francisco Berneda

about

The company was founded by Luís Berneda in year 1939 at the Catalan city of Sant Boi de Llobregat, with the initial company name Berneda, manufacturer of shoes for rugby football, futsal, handball and boxing, among other sports.

In 1953 the brothers Javier and Francisco, second generation of the family, entered the track and field athletics market, and were the pioneers in sports shoe making in Spain.

In 1964 they added the characteristic "X" symbol and changed the company and brand name from "Berneda" to "Munich". The aim was to make a comfortable, quality product with a new and original look. In the nineteen seventies, riding on the wave of the five-a-side football boom in Spain, the brand developed a special shoe designed exclusively for the sport.

In addition to its top-end indoor soccer range, Munich devotes a large proportion of its energies to streetwear, where Goal is its signature design. In 1978, the Goal sports shoe upended the world of casual fashions. Versatile and meticulously designed, it is made up of an average 25 parts and brings an inexhaustible supply of colour and fabric combinations to each new season.

n year 1999 Xavier Berneda, marketing manager of the company, and his brother David, financial manager, both of them grandsons of the company founder, convinced the father and uncle to diversify the company and enter the field of street shoes and fashion. The Asian production, specially from China, was already a fierce competitor.

The Munich sales strategy has led to the positioning of its products in ready-to-wear shops and turned its Goal designs into fashion accessories. The company has an outstanding network of distributors abroad, particularly in Italy, which accounts for 40% of turnover.

The company already has 300 POS at some of Spain’s leading retailers and is also big in Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal and Japan. Furthermore, it now has plans to enter new areas like Central and Northern Europe, and Russia as well. The ambitious growth plan comes as no surprise: Munich has increased its turnover 173% since 2002, largely owing to a spectacular increase in sales in the European Union.

Thanks to this initiative, Xavier Berneda won in year 2008 the Spanish award "Young Enterpreneur". Xavier has changed the company, entering the streetwear fashion market, keeping the company design and quality standards but opening it to new markets. Around half of the production is sold to fashion victims ready to spend from 120 to 300 euros in a pair of sports shoes.

One of the most innovative activities of the company is the website Munich My Way, launched in 2009. On that site everybody is welcomed to personalize and design a pair of shoes combining many possible colors and textures, resulting in up to 333 millions of different combinations. The user can select the color of any of the main 9 parts of a shoe, including the sole, flap, heel and cords. When Munich receives the order, the factory produces those shoes, and delivers it within 2 weeks. Munich My Way also offers the possibility of buying a different size of the right shoe compared to the left one. This is specially useful for soccer and futsal players who often require a bigger size for the shoe used to shoot.